Cell Phones and Cancer

[John Moulder <jmoulder@mcw.edu>]

Cell Phones and Cancer:  What Is the Evidence for a Connection?

JE Moulder, LS Erdreich, RS Malyapa, J Merritt, WF Pickard, and Vijayalaxmi

Radiation Research 151:513-531, 1999

ABSTRACT
There have been allegations in the media and in the courts that cell phones
and other types of hand-held transceivers are a cause of cancer.  There
have also been numerous public objections to the siting of TV, radio and
cell phone transmission facilities because of a fear of cancer induction.
A recent publication in Radiation Research by Repacholi et al., 9147,
631-640, 1997), which suggests that exposure to radio-frequency (RF)
radiation may increase lymphoma incidence in mice has contributed to this
controversy.  The goal of this review is to provide biomedical researchers
with a brief overview of the existing RF radiation-cancer studies.  This
article begins with a brief review of the physics and technology of cell
phones.  It then reviews the existing epidemiological studies of RF
radiation, identifying gaps in our knowledge.  Finally, the review
discusses the cytogenetics literature on RF radiation and the whole-animal
RF-radiation carcinogenesis studies.  The epidemiological evidence for an
association between RF radiation and cancer is found to be weak and
inconsistent, the laboratory studies generally do not suggest that cell
phone RF radiation has genotoxic or epigenetic activity, and a cell phone
RF radiation-cancer connection is found to be physically implausible.
Overall, the existing evidence for a causal relationship between RF
radiation from cell phones and cancer is found to be weak to non-existent.

John Moulder (jmoulder@mcw.edu)
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